Fabius von Gugel

Fabius Freiherr Gugel von Brandt and Diepoltsdorf (born September 13, 1910 in Worms , † November 28, 2000 in Munich ) was a German fantastic-surrealist draftsman, graphic artist, painter, set designer, porcelain designer and poet.

Quote

• Be against your time, I told myself when I first saw your dish clearly.

Life

Childhood and youth

After the birth as the second son of the noble family Gugel von Brandt and Diepoltsdorf in Worms, Baron Horst Rüdiger Fabius von Gugel grew up in Munich from 1912. The former Nuremberg patrician family was raised to the imperial nobility by Charles V in 1543 and the Bavarian line to the Bavarian baron status in 1812.

He had been artistically active since early youth, and Munich seemed a suitable breeding ground for him. The Isenheim Altarpiece by Mathias Grünewald (1475 / 80–1528) was brought from Colmar to Munich during the First World War and, like Otto Dix's (1891–1969) images of war, had a great influence on the young Fabius. He attended the Knirrschule and later took courses on painting technique with Professor Max Doerner (1870-1939). He completed his school career in Augsburg at the end of the twenties.

Rome and Paris

Stays in Rome and Paris followed . In Rome, where he was already at the age of sixteen, he completed a nude drawing course at the local academy Scuola del nudo . He got to know Paris in the 1930s as a guest of the French ambassador to Germany at the time, André François-Poncet (1887–1978), with whose sons Fabius von Gugel was friends.

The war years

In 1939 Fabius von Gugel was drafted into the Wehrmacht , coming from Paris, where he had planned a first exhibition . Taking advantage of his family's connections, he was transferred to the German embassy in Rome as a radio operator after participating in front-line battles in Alsace and graduating from the army intelligence school . In the turmoil of the last years of the war he came back to Munich between the fronts of the Allies, the Nazis and the Italian partisans.

Post-war years in Italy

Soon after his return to Munich he was drawn back to Rome. In 1947 he stayed there with an American friend in Via San Teodoro. He soon made contact with the local art scene by meeting the architect and painter Fabrizio Clerici (1913–1993) and the painter Leonor Fini (1908–1996) at an exhibition of his drawings . Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) offered Fabius von Gugel a studio community, which he turned down, however, in order to work temporarily with his friend, Chilean painter Roberto Matta (1911–2002). Clerici hired Gugel to design interiors and recommended him for the design of stage sets for opera performances in Rome. Also at Clerici's mediation, Gugel made acquaintance with Federico Fellini (1920–1993) and was commissioned to set up variety scenes for his film Luci del Varietà , which, however, were cut out again in the finished film. His mother's illness brought Fabius von Gugel back to Munich.

Fabius von Gugel, Thomas Mann and the devil of Palestrina

In 1953 Fabius von Gugel exhibited his drawings in the Galleria dell'Obelisco in Rome. At the same time Thomas Mann (1875–1955) stayed with his wife Katia as a guest of his Italian publisher Arnoldo Mondadori (1889–1971) in Rome and resided there in the Hotel Excelsior. Gugel took the opportunity and made an appointment with Thomas Mann, with the ulterior motive of winning Mann for a review of his works or even for an introductory speech for his exhibition. While showing Thomas Mann his Cinderella drawings, which the latter viewed with great interest, Thomas Mann told of a vision that he had already in 1895, in the stone hall in Palestrina, when he was suddenly confronted with an apparition of the devil. According to Gugel, Mann described that "... in the afternoon heat, all of a sudden, sitting on the black sofa, saw a stranger who he knew was none other than the devil". (Quoted from Peter de Mendelssohn : Der Zauberer . Frankfurt / Main 1975, p. 293).

Munich and the world

From 1956 he lived in Munich again. Commissions for stage design took him time and again to other locations, including back to Rome. He went on many trips, e.g. B. to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Max Ernst (1891–1976); World trips took him to North Africa and India, which was also reflected in his work. In Germany itself, Fabius von Gugel was little recognized as an artist. He hated abstract art, which was glorified in Germany after the war, but he also did not want to join the surrealists with their complacency. He continued to work for the stage (among others for the directors Axel von Ambesser and Fritz Kortner ) and as a designer for a porcelain factory in Selb . His free work, mainly drawings and graphics, grew continuously, although Fabius von Gugel was more time-consuming than he would have liked for his commissioned work. In 1978 he received the Schwabing Art Prize for Painting and Graphics, and in 1993 the "Munich Glows" art prize. Fabius von Gugel died in November 2000 and was buried in the family crypt in Sindelsdorf . The commemorative speech, like the birthday celebration in the Hartmann Gallery, was given by the art historian Alexander Rauch .

plant

Librorum Triumphus (1965)

The art historian Gustav René Hocke (1908–1985) saw mannerist tendencies in the work of Fabius von Gugel . Hocke wrote in his work: Mannerism. The world as a labyrinth that one of the essential characteristics of mannerist artists is the affinity for one's own gender. Gugel's main work, Aschen-Brödel or the lost shoe (1946/48), reveals an at least critical relationship to the world of the feminine. Gugel himself stylized himself as a revenant , as yesterday man , which he justified with the fact that a number of his ancestors could only decide to reproduce at an advanced age, so that he could actually have been born at least 200 years earlier. From this point of view, it is no wonder that Fabius painted and drew in the old masterly, baroque manner. His penchant for stage design can also be explained by this baroque design will.

In his pictures, Gugel processed real experiences, but also dreams and imaginations that are rooted in his fears and depression. "Gugel's exact dream protocols are among the most exciting experiences that fantastic modern art has to offer." ( Krichbaum / Zondergeld 1977). Fabius von Gugel distanced himself personally from the Surrealists, who ignored a German artist after the Second World War , and accused Salvador Dalí of plagiarizing his ideas for pictures.

After an exhibition of Gugel's work entitled The Other World (Dec. 1998 to Feb. 1999) in the Panorama Museum Bad Frankenhausen, shortly before his death, the artist decided to transfer a large part of his painterly and graphic work to the Panorama Museum.

Works

• Aktaion (around 1935/37), oil on canvas 54.5 × 65.5 cm
• Aschen-Brödel or The Lost Shoe (1946/1948), 30 drawings each 21.5 × 31.9 cm, with texts (considered a key work)
• Die Nacht (1952), pen drawing, 23.5 × 32 cm
• Librorum Triumphus. Copper engraving. Heinz Moos publishing house, Munich 1965.
• The Theologians (1977), etching 27 × 20 cm
• The hunt is older than the game (1980), lithograph 41 × 57 cm
• In Praise of Despair (1984), 38 poems

literature

• Jörg Krichbaum , Rein A. Zondergeld : DuMont's little lexicon of fantastic painting . DuMont, Cologne 1977, ISBN 3-7701-0908-2 .
• Richard P. Hartmann (eds.), Hans H. Hofstätter (text): Fabius von Gugel, The drawing work . Gallery RP Hartmann, Munich 1980.
• Richard P. Hartmann (Ed.): Fabius von Gugel, Das Graphische Werk . Galerie RP Hartmann, Munich, DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-7701-1452-3 .
• Alexander Rauch, Fabius von Gugel, a Munich old master of surrealism - for his 80th birthday, in: Fine addresses, October 1990.
• Alexander Rauch, Fabius von Gugel honoring the Munich Art Prize, in: Top-Magazin-München, Winter 1993 Gerd Lindner (Ed.): Fabius von Gugel, The Other World . Panorama Museum, Bad Frankenhausen 1998, ISBN 3-9805312-6-0 (with autobiographical information).
• Michael Nungesser : The fantastic draftsman Fabius von Gugel as an eraser and lithographer . In: Graphische Kunst , Issue 53 (1999), pp. 60-63 ( ISSN  0342-3158 ). (Nungesser incorrectly quotes the Gugel saying about the judgment of time as a face !)

Web links

• Auction results at artnet (with some images)